


even when you're gone there's the aftershock

by clairelutra (exosolarmoon)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Acting, Adrien Agreste Knows, F/M, School Play, Theatre, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, i love how that's a tag, implied almost-reveal, marinette might know too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 03:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exosolarmoon/pseuds/clairelutra
Summary: “Hey, Felix?”It was a play.“Yeah?”It was just a play.“Do you believe in soulmates?”It was just play-acting for the crowd at their backs, and it meant nothing.And if he told himself that enough times, Adrien thought as Marinette reeled him in with her eyes alone, then maybe,one day, he’d start to believe it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> not sure whether or not to mark this as incomplete because i was planning a continuation at some point, but it would be more of a separate thing built off the idea here
> 
> i'll leave this as a oneshot, i think

“Hey, Felix?”

It was a play.

“Yeah?”

It was just a play.

“Do you believe in soulmates?”

It was just play-acting for the crowd at their backs, and it meant nothing.

And if he told himself that enough times, Adrien thought as Marinette reeled him in with her eyes alone, then maybe, _one day_ , he’d start to believe it.

He didn’t have ‘one day’ though; this was the one and only showing of the play the drama club had worked on all year, and like _hell_ was Adrien going to fall out of character just because Marinette was spectacularly talented.

He somehow remained stoic enough to pass for ‘Felix’ as Marinette tiptoed up to him, those blue eyes glowing _radioactive_ in the stage lights. 

“Do you ever just… meet someone?” she murmured, just loud enough to be picked up by their microphones, making every hair on his scalp stand straight up as she trailed her fingertips from the corner of his jaw to his chin. “And think… ‘ _I was waiting for you_ ’?”

Red and black and radioactive blue flashed before his eyes, and it was only long months of practice that enabled Adrien to say, “N-no, never.”

(He wasn’t supposed to stutter. He wasn’t supposed to flinch. He was supposed to push her away, deride her for being a hopeless romantic, leave her in the dark to cry her tears and set up the plot for act two.

But Marinette had the kind of eyes that could always change his mind, and he didn’t think any amount of practice would help him pretend they couldn’t.)

“Really?” breathed Marinette-as-Brigette, deceptively delicate finger still resting on his chin. (He needed to push her away.) “You’ve never looked at someone and thought ‘ _you’re one of my kind_ ’?”

 _Yes!_ said Adrien’s heart, lurching against his ribcage to get its point across, tattooing bell-like laughter and confident smirks and blue scarves on the backs of his eyelids.

“Didn’t I say it?” snorted Adrien, a tiny quaver in his voice he couldn’t repress.  He _needed_ to push her away.“Stop trying to paint me into your little fantasies and leave me alone.”

The line might’ve been more convincing if he’d been across the floor where he was _supposed_ to be rather than rooted to the spot and _ruined_.

She was supposed to call after him, swear that she’d make him love her, and he was supposed to shout at her and walk away. That was how they _practiced it_.

Marinette had never quite looked like she meant the words so much before.

“What if I don’t want to leave you alone?” 

That wasn’t in the script.

“What if I think…” Her fingers trailed up his jaw, and it was _Ladybug_ that gave him a look to sharp to be a smile and too warm to be a smirk, cupping his jaw and tracing his lips with the pad of her thumb, _electrifying_ him right down to his toes. “What if I think we could be amazing?”

His breath stuttered out of him like he’d been _punched_.

He _felt_ like he’d been punched.

“I don’t know you, really, but I think I’ve known you forever,” she whispered, the words entering through his ears and slithering in coils around his heart. “I’ve… I’ve never felt like this before.”

She looked up into his eyes, soft and open and hopeful, and Adrien… 

Adrien forgot about his lines. He forgot about the crowd, and forgot about his character, and forgot that this was make-believe, because Marinette was here and Marinette was Ladybug, and Marinette was diving headfirst off the script and whispering to him that she thought they could be _amazing_ , and _everything_ in Adrien could only concur.

“So please, please, tell me…” She swallowed, delicate throat working in clear relief under the stage lights, sweat glistening on her collarbone. “Tell me if you’ve ever, _ever_ thought of me like that. Tell me that this isn’t… isn’t just me… _please_ …”

It wasn’t, it really _really_ wasn’t, because all Adrien had to do was hear her voice to feel home, and to hear that same voice pleading with him like _that_ …

He wasn’t supposed to kiss her until the end of the play.

He had, for the most part, forgotten that they were in a play at all.

“It’s not,” he whispered back somehow, and then he kissed her.

She arched and inhaled and responded immediately, tongue flitting against his an a hum rolling in the back of her throat, just barely tangible where their lips met, and Adrien’s stomach burned. 

He kissed her fast and hard, without finesse or experience or _anything_ except tides of emotion that had been banked and bottled for far too long.

She tasted like soured sugar, like the energy drinks on the table backstage, like warm breath and rooftop trysts and midnight.

She tasted like _home_.

And then someone in the crowd whistled.

It started up a cascade of noise that was impossible to ignore or avoid, the cheers crashing around them like a landslide, and Adrien ripped away in a panic, sense reasserting itself because _oh no, the play, what had they done_.

“I-I—” he choked. “I have to go.”

She gasped against his lips, cool air caressing them with the force of it, and he stumbled back to the echoing gasp of the crowd, ignoring her, “Wait, wait, A— Felix!!” as he fled.

The lights flashed behind the stage curtains, the awed and delighted faces of the crowd blurred and vanished, and then Adrien was crashing into the unused props backstage, hand over his frantic, pounding heart and trying not to rattle anything out loud as his knees shook and his ears burned.

Behind him, he was distantly aware of a soft thump, of the curtains falling, and of his castmates shooting him looks that ranged from amusement to delight to absolute fury.

“Well,” sighed Nino, whose script Adrien had just rendered unusable for the rest of the show. “Looks like we’ll be adlibbing a bit.”

Adrien opened his mouth to apologize, and found he could only wheeze, his entire mouth tingling too hard to feel the words he tried to shape.

What the hell…

_What the hell had that been?_

(Behind him, on her knees on the stage with a hand over her mouth, Marinette looked like she was wondering the exact same thing.)


End file.
